What Is Solemnity in the Bible?
Feast
The greatest kind of feast in the Church’s calendar, like Christmas, Easter, or the Assumption.
It can mean
- Three ranks: the Church’s celebrations are solemnities, feasts, and memorials. The solemnity is the greatest.
- It begins the evening before: a solemnity begins with First Vespers, on the evening of the day before.
- The greatest of all: Easter is the “solemnity of solemnities.”
Today
On solemnities the “Gloria” and the Creed are said at Mass.
Source: RAE, “solemnidad”; Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, 10-11; Catechism 1169; GIRM 68